Oh, this kid.

He is something else. He is wild and full of life— a talking machine. He loves to say, “Well, good morning, Mama! Whatcha been doing?” or “Hi! How are you?” to friends at church.

{Let it be noted that he is sometimes in a “mood” or worried that I’m going to leave him with someone and, thus, must be prompted to friendliness.}

He says, “Well, hi Daddy! Hi, John Wicksie!”

He loves to sing The Itsy, Bitsy Spider and loves for me to sing Let the Little Children Come and All Aboard the Choo-Choo Train. He is obsessed with Thomas the Tank Engine. He loves to identify every moving vehicle he sees while we’re on the road. He screams . . .

It’s a firetruck, Mama!

It’s a police car, Mama! Say, Woooo-woooo!

It’s a flat-bed truck, Mama!

He seems to have some obsessive-compulsive, perfectionistic tendencies. Bless him. I wonder where he gets that? He likes his trains and cars lined up just so. Once, when he got his trains connected just the way he wanted, he looked at my dad and said, “Perfect!” He gets very frustrated when he can’t make a toy work the way he wants or when things don’t go his way. We are already having to have a lot of conversations about how to respond when things don’t the way we would like. It’s a hard lesson. I know. He’s a smart cookie. He files EVERYTHING we say away in that brain, and we just never know when he’ll pull it out. We have to be very, very careful. He rarely forgets something we read in a book. He is passionate—either passionately happy or passionately unhappy. The former makes life for everyone else much more pleasant. There are moments when he fills my heart with so much joy and delight that I almost can’t stand it.
And then there are the moments when he tests my patience so much that I don’t think I’ll survive this season.